Up to 6 miles

The eyelet skipping helped quite a bit. The blister area still got hot around 6 miles though. I should say that the blister is not fully healed, which I'm sure makes it more sensitive. A fully healed blister, and a little looser lacing, and I think I'm all set.

I also GU'd for the first time. Wow, that's interesting stuff. I had chocolate. It's basically about twice as thick as peanut butter, and tastes like chocolate pudding (sort of). You swish a big gloop of this stuff in your mouth, take a big swig of water, swish it around until you can swallow it, and do it again until the packet is empty. It definitely gives you a boost of energy.

5 weeks until the race. I'm looking good at this point (knock on wood).

Up to 3.5 Miles before the blister blows up

A new culprit, perhaps... I think the hard material used to form the Asics logo on the side of the shoe is pulling tight and causing problems. The side of the shoe is nice stretchy mesh, but those Asics lines have no stretch to them, and pull taught. After 3.5 miles yesterday, I had a very specific area of the foot that felt blisterish. I stuck my finger in the shoe, and low and behold, I was dead on one of those lines. I'm going to try skipping the lacing hole associated with that line and see if that does it. I'm going to do mole padding for Saturday as well. We'll see. After this Saturday, I'll have 5 weeks left. One of those at least has to be a taper week, so I have 4 weeks of training. I better peak in the 3rd week, which means I better be up to at least 10 miles on April 19th. If the blister would freaking cooperate with me, I swear I can do it. We'll see.....

Oh.. and the perfect pushups.

I feel I was cheating on my perfect pushups, and was not, in fact, doing them "perfect". I'm starting them up again as part of my lifting routine, but I'm doing a true 2-second allllll the way down and allllll the way back up perfect pushup.

It's way harder.

Take my max set record back down to 20.

Plan... uh.... F for the blister

Plans A-E haven't worked, so this is plan F. Since my insole is one of those heat molding types, I've heated the inside arch edge with a lighter and curled it outward towards the edge of the shoe. This way, instead of the insole curving up on the arch, and ending with the edge of the insole facing up, it instead curves up, and then in the last 1/4" or so curves back down so the edge ends up facing to the side. I ran my finger around the inside of the shoe and I don't feel an edge at all. Hopefully this does it.

I'm also now using Wrightsock Blister socks. These are dual layer socks so the two layers rub together to reduce the friction transferred to your foot. I'm also using Blistershield powder. It looks and feels like flour. You pour 1 tsp of it in each sock, shake it around, and it coats the inside. The powder is almost friction free, and doesn't absorb water thereby acting like an antiperspirant.

We'll see tonight.

Hmm

2 miles in and the blister area started to get hot again. I called it at 2 miles so as to not make the blister worse again. I think I have a sharp edge on my insole or something. I'll ask the running forum for advice. I may try mole padding to put some cushion on that spot. We'll see. I lift tonight, and hopefully run again Wednesday.

I'm running tonight!

I'm taping up the foot and running, damn it :)

I'll do 5-6 miles or so.

Just my luck

Hoorah... the blister final starts to look good, and I catch a cold.

Hopefully I'll be healthy by Saturday and can run.

Almost... Almost...

The blister is almost healed. I plan to start to the gym tomorrow. It may be lifting if the blister is completely there, but if it is, 5 mile run.

Going nuts!

Day three of no exercise, and it's taking it's toll.
I don't like the weight... I don't like the energy level... I don't like seeing precious training days roll past.

I have a secret though.... I'm secretly planning to still run the half mary on May 4th. shhhhh.....

I ran 6 miles comfortably (except this damn blister!). With 7+ weeks left, I know I can make 13.1. I have a game plan for blister prevention, as soon as this one is healed.

It looks a lot better now. Most of the redness around it is gone. The body of it is split in half, with half being a deep blood red, half being almost white. I'd like to think the deep red part is slowly fading, but it's hard to tell. I did take a picture of it on Tuesday. I'll have to compare it to now.

I had yogurt come out of my foot

ewww.....

I had a bad blister that I decided to run 3 miles on anyway. Stupid... I know.

I got home and saw that it looked massively infected. I had a 2-3 inch red border all the way around it. I poked it, excepting typical yellowish tinted puss to flow out.

Nope.

Key Lime Pie Yogurt. That's what it was. A nice yellowish green, and as thick as yogurt. I had to, sort of, "squeeze" it out of the blister like you would a packet of ketchup.

It's all good though. I cut all the dead skin off with my trusty Swiss Army Knife, doused it a few times in hydrogen peroxide, slapped some ointment on, and bandaged it up. It hurts still, but it's WAY better than it was last night.

6 Miler DONE!

Oh ya... and that's 6 miles on the dreadmill damn it, which I equate to 47ish miles on the road :)

I do have a gigantic blister to show for my efforts. Get me some wood to knock on quick, but based on how I felt running essentially half a half marathon on the treadmill, I think the half mary might be doable after all.

NO JINXING IT! We'll see how it goes when I can finally get outside. Come on spring!

Designed my lifting routine

I got my lifting routine put together. I'm going to try to start doing an alternating run/lift schedule with Friday's off. I hope to see some body composition changes over the next 10-15 pounds.